The Outward Signs Of Wealth

Connecticut has been renown for many things in its long history, and its various nicknames suggest that the overall reputation of our state has been forged by intelligence, fortitude, ingenuity, craft, and constancy: The Constitution State, The Nutmeg State (early traders were said to be so shrewd they could sell wooden nutmegs), The Provisions State, and The Land of Steady Habits. Perhaps as a result of these traits, Connecticut is coming to be known as The Rich State.

Newly released census figures show that Connecticut is again the richest state in the nation with a median household income of $56,409 in 2003, 30 percent higher than the nation as a whole. The state’s wealth seems to be central to common caricatures of Connecticut. An insurance company is currently running a commercial that pictures a gleaming yacht and advertises lower rates as a way to help keep Connecticut ahead of New Jersey as the wealthiest state. And there was a lot of tongue-in-cheek schadenfreude around the state this week as Fairfield County ($60,881 median household income) was toppled from its lofty perch as the richest county in the richest state by both Middlesex ($61,770) and Tolland ($61,290) counties in the newly released census figures. The director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis told the Associated Press, “We’ll pray for them,” adding, “Obviously Fairfield County should probably file for some emergency relief.”

We wonder sometimes what our nutmegger forebears would think about the emergence of affluence as the most obvious trait of our home state. Our country and this state grew out of the Age of Enlightenment, and for a sense of what people were thinking at the time on this subject, consider the follow observations by the 18th Century philosopher Denis Diderot:

“In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune, they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t have money will ruin themselves in vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”

We are justly proud of the accomplishments and industry of our state. We are not proud that more than 250,000 people in Connecticut are living in poverty; 88,000 of them are children. We are proud that incomes are rising not just in Fairfield County but throughout the state. We are not proud that The Land of Steady Habits is now more commonly known as The Land of Hummers, Mega-Mansions, and Balloon Mortgages. We want to reclaim once again our pride in Connecticut’s inner resources of intelligence, fortitude, ingenuity, craft, and constancy and leave behind this emerging hubris in the outward signs of wealth.